Survivor, or Seattle Burning
by Cmdr. Gen. Marasco
Summary: The Rusty Ruins were once a great metropolis. Seattle, the Emerald City. Then came the Oil Bug and the Rusty Panic, and it all went up in flames. This is the burning that city, as seen through the eyes of one survived it.


The day the world ended was my birthday. Great present, right? Yeah, I thought so too. But that's what I got. The arrival of the dreaded Petroleum-Ignition Bacteria into my hometown of Seattle, Washington.  
The worst part? There wasn't a warning. No dark cloud, no flames, no cries of horror and fear. No, those came after the bug got into the city.  
The first I heard of it was when a huge surge of emergency vehicles went by my house. Firetrucks, ambulances, police cars: you name it, they were there-and boy were they moving. I didn't really pay attention, though. I was enjoying my birthday cake. I can still taste it; strawberry ice cream in vanilla flour. Glorious.  
And of course, wouldn't you know it, I happened to have a piece in my mouth when the first explosion rocked the city. It was a bad one; something big going off. Could have been one of the oil tanks in the gas station near my house. It cracked some of our windows and knocked half the books on my shelf to the floor. It also made me jerk forward and almost choke on my cake.  
Then came the next explosion. Closer, but smaller. Probably a car near the gas station going off. More of a aftershock than anything else. But it was enough to get me to move.  
The few people at my party didn't understand what was going on. They all thought the Oil Bug (that's what I called it, anyway, lot easier to say than its real name) was contained in the east, somewhere in Colorado. But I thought differently; and I was ready for when it would come to us.  
Which, I realized after that second explosion, was now. And I was going to get out of the city, or my name wasn't Asher Young.  
While my guests were still milling about in confusion, I dropped the rest of my cake and ran for the back door. Near it was my punch-out kit; a backpack with clothes, survival gear, supplies. Everything needed to live after I completed my plan. No plastic or petroleum-based products, of course. That's one thing people tended to forget; the Bug attacked anything with oil in it, plastic included.  
As I ran, I slung the backpack over my shoulder and without a backward glance, kicked open the back door. I didn't bother with the steps, just jumped them and started running. I needed to get away from my house, and fast.  
Needless to say, my escape plan wasn't in my home; as easy as that would have made it, it would be impossible. My place was built on a gas main; when the bug got into that, it would be blown sky high-something I'd rather not have happen to me.  
Once outside, I wrenched open the shed in the far corner of my yard and hauled out my bike. It was a good one, originally my main mode of transportation besides the metro bus but now modified to get me away from my house as fast as possible. All plastic stripped off, replaced with metal and natural rubber.  
I dropped it on the ground, mounted it in one motion, and was off. I pedaled hard, fear and desperation giving me a jolt of energy to back up the leg muscles I'd built up over the last couple months. I literally flew down the street from my house, shocking a couple people along the way. But it looked like I was the least of their problems.  
The realization that the Bug was here was setting in. Panic was beginning to flow into the streets. Screams, cries, explosions, car horns...it all blended into a mad cacophony that grated on my ears. I ignored it. I had to. There was nothing I could do but run. Or bike, if you want to be accurate. And that's just what I did.  
Another explosion shook my bones; there went my house. I hoped my parents got out. Pretty sure they didn't. Whatever. They were just foster ones. Never liked them anyway.  
I peddled harder, both to escape the nagging feeling of worry and sadness and to outrun the ensuing fireball from what was once my house. That's how the Bug spread. It got into oil, changed it to something oxygen-ignited, then spread when the oil blew up. And there was a lot of oil under my house.  
Sure enough, in moments everything near me oil-based was burning and exploding. Cars, the street, signs, people...  
Oh god. The people. Anyone who had any plastic on them was instantly alight. And almost everyone had something. Cell phones, MP3 players, watches, accessories, clothing. The smell of burning plastic and flesh singed my nostrils. Their screams filled my ears, made me want to just curl up and hide. But I didn't. I pulled up my shirt to hopefully stop any of the Bug from entering my lungs. I did not want to think about what would happen if it got into contact with plastic or oil inside my body.  
I sped on, jumping a section of road that was smoking and cracked like it was one of the jumps near Green Lake. I was close; at the bottom of the hill was my way out. I just hoped it was still intact.  
As I neared, I saw it was. The shed owned by my friend was still standing, untouched due to its solid quarry stone construction. I smashed on the brake, nearly toppling over as I bled momentum into a skid that left a long streak of rubber in my wake. The rubber started to smoke, and not just from the heat. The Bug was getting into it.  
I shoved the bike away, sending it careening down the hill and into a ditch. I didn't care; it had served its one purpose to me.  
I wrenched the doors of the shed open, each one sliding apart with a whisper on many ball bearings. Darkness and a wash of cold air greeted me. I embraced it, feeling the chill sooth my strangely warm skin. I lowered my shirt and walked inside.  
Laying in the dark like the cat I had named it for was my escape plan; A souped-up former military-style jeep I'd christened "The Puma". Untouched and in perfect condition, just as I'd left her during her most recent tune-up.  
She was my escape route; I'd made her into the ultimate non-oil-based vehicle. Every shred of plastic in her body and her six seats was gone, replaced with metal composites or animal-based materials. Her tires were solid carbon-fiber weave, not only completely plastic and oil free but bulletproof and puncture-proof. They didn't need either.  
And her engine. That was the true beauty of her. She wasn't a gas guzzler. In fact, she didn't run on gas, or diesel, or biodiesel. She ran on hydrogen. Her heart was a reclaimed military-grade 12 liter water-cooled hydrogen injected modified internal combustion engine. No fuel stations needed. To get her filled up again, I just had to stick 12 liters of whatever water I could find into her tank and the engine did the rest.  
I ran my hands over her metal skin, feeling the cold leech into my flesh. The fresh coat of paint I'd given her the day before was dry, and the metallic green reflected my face like a mirror.  
Sighing, I slung my bag into her passenger seat and vaulted inside. Like a good military vehicle, she was open body; no doors or anything like that. Just a windshield that sloped backwards over the driver and passenger seats. For that matter, the seats in the back weren't even really seats. Just three benches I'd welded into the formerly flatbed back, two on the sides and one facing to the rear. Lean, clean, and efficient; just what I needed. Not pretty, but it would get the job done.  
I mashed the ignition button with my fist and she purred to life. The grumble of her engine shook her body, like she was waking up from some long sleep and stretching her legs. Affectionately, I patted her dashboard, then crossed my fingers and hit the accelerator.  
My ride jerked and rumbled, engine rising from a purr to a roar. The wheels spun for a moment on the slick concrete floor, then caught and I was gone.  
I howled along with the engine, suddenly realizing that I was going to survive. The whole time I'd been running to here, in the back of my head a small voice had been saying "you won't make it..." But now I was proving it wrong.  
I swung the wheel around, sliding the Puma onto the main road I'd just come down from. In the time I'd been inside, the Bug's effects had reached hellish proportions. Huge gouts of sickly smoke poured into the sky, explosions chained off all over, and I could barely hear my engine over the sounds of screaming. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I had to drive. I reached inside the glove compartment and slipped on the goggles I had stored there to keep the smoke out of my eyes.  
Something shook the ground, more drawn out than an explosion. A glance to the right showed what; one of the skyscrapers that made up downtown was collapsing, chunks of debris the size of houses avalanching off its sides. Before it completed its implosion, it exploded, as the Bug got into something oil-based within it. Instinctively I cringed away, even though I was at least a mile from the epicenter. I slammed down the accelerator and moved on.  
I swerved with the road, taking some of the turns so hard the Puma rode up on two wheels for several heart-stopping moments. Then she righted herself like the cat I named her for, and I rolled on.  
For five minutes I drove. Nothing noteworthy happened, except for the continual descent of my once lovely city into a burning, screaming hell-hole, but quickly I was able to block it out and focus on just driving.  
I knew where I was going; I had to get out of the city and away from anything that might propagate the Bug. And while it would make sense for me to simply take the Puma and get out, I wasn't sure that she could handle that kind of punishment. I hadn't had time to test her for everything. And I didn't particularly fancy the idea of being stuck in the rain-shadow desert of western Washington in a car that required water to drive.  
No, I would be using the Puma to get to another form of transportation, one that would get me completely out of the city. The Inter-Urban Magnetic Levitation Transit System, known locally as the Seattle Subway. From there, I would ride it as far as I could, before the bug got into it and made the magnets fail. I had no clue how far that would be.  
But, as long as it got me out of the city, I didn't care. From then on...well, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.  
I slammed on the accelerator and roared straight for the train tracks.


End file.
